Dear Professor Dunne,
Surrey UCU have raised numerous concerns in the last year about several questionable Executive Board and University Council decisions, including the borrowing of £20M for the AQA Building, and the £11M Surrey Future Fellows scheme. We have recently written open letters to the Vice Chancellor and to the Chair of University Council about our concerns.
University resources have also been allocated to the development of fifteen Surrey Online Learning (SOL, originally SOUL) programmes, five of which are due to begin in September 2024. https://www.surrey.ac.uk/online-learning
Your article on SurreyNet in October 2023 implied that SOL would provide a route out of the dire financial situation that the University finds itself in. You stated that if “1,000 students enrol, the University will bring in revenue of over £2m”. In this same article, you stated that “Fees for these programmes will be priced competitively to reflect the fact that we are looking for high enrolments and the target audience will be from outside the UK.”
Therefore, we would like you to respond to the following questions:
How much has been spent in partnering with 2u/edX a) in the previous financial year b) prior to 2023-2024?
How much money is estimated to have been spent on developing the SOL / SOUL programme in total, to date?
We hope for reassurances that the SOL programme is lining up to be the success that you predicted, given your opinion in the October ’23 article that “Surrey cannot afford to remain on the sidelines while other universities and private providers divide up the spoils… left to our own devices, starting from a very low base, we risk being completely left behind in the race to succeed in the rapidly growing global online education market.” We hope that aspirations for high numbers of students has materialised, rather than being part of an optimism-bias, such as was discussed at length in your 2024 New Year Missive on the 8th of January, which concluded “the importance of positive thinking that underpins optimism-bias remains relevant but it must not get ahead of reality”.
Therefore, we request a response to these further questions:
How many students have currently accepted places on your five SOL programmes?
How many of these students are from outside the UK?
What is the predicted final number of students on these SOL programmes for the 2024/25 academic year?
We are especially keen to seek the above assurances that the University of Surrey community are receiving a good return for the investment you made in SOL, because we are aware that some parts of the project have already run into difficulties. In your February SurreyNet update entitled “SOL: The Brave New Future of Surrey’s Online Education you explained your rationale for choosing to partner with edX: “Enough of the doom loop! There is one very positive opportunity on the table, and that is to win a share of the massive global market in online learning… we have decided not to step into this global marketplace without a proven ally who knows how to market and recruit educational programmes.” During the last year, we have noted several reports of increasing financial instability of edX, culminating in recent reports that they have finally been forced to file for bankruptcy.
We note that University Council, in their March 2024 meeting, had expressed concerns that “edX/ 2U are in financial difficulty and have been very open with the University about the issues. There is a strong relationship and protections in the contract so that Surrey could walk away in certain scenarios and would not lose financially.”
This raises further questions that we would like you to address:
What steps have been taken if 2u/edX stops operating to cover programmes?
What are the sector trends regarding partnerships with 2U / edX?
Given that the financial difficulties experienced by edX were known well in advance of your announcements in February about our partnership with them, we ask:
Did anyone on the Executive Board raise concerns about partnering with edX during the planning of the SOL programmes?
As a Trade Union, our key role is to protect jobs and maintain high standards of working conditions for staff. Therefore, we would like to ask one final question:
How would a low number of students, coupled with edX bankruptcy, affect staff involved in running the SOL programmes?
We hope that it is realised why there is a need for openness and transparency to the trade unions and the academic community since the teaching we deliver as a university should exist to benefit both the institution and society.
The UCU Surrey Branch Committee